Facebook is ‘being used to broadcast dogfighting and enable animal trafficking’
Animal rights activists have alleged that Facebook is being used to broadcast videos of dogfighting.
A report from Lady Freethinker has found that ‘dogfighters are promoting their gruesome trade with alarming frequency’.
Sick humans have made more than 2,000 posts promoting fights between dogs as well as promoting animal trafficking, campaigners said.
The posts show dogs mauling each other, being reared in appalling ‘factory-like training facilities’ and ‘displaying the telltale scars and open wounds of fighting’.
Animals are also sold online as ‘champion’ warriors and then shipped worldwide to face torture or death.
Lady Freethinker wrote: ‘Facebook is an enormous platform used by billions of people around the world, and has the power for tremendous good — but only if such abuses are dealt with appropriately.
‘As a global tool for communication, advocacy, news, and commerce, Facebook has a responsibility to block illegal content and ensure that users do not promote violence toward any species. Additionally, they have an obligation to report to local law enforcement, to help them stop known animal abusers.’
The animal rights group identified 150 pages involved in animal fighting which have more than 160,000 members.
The social network vowed to clamp down on the problem.
A Facebook spokesman said: ‘Content promoting or depicting staged animal vs animal fights isn’t allowed on Facebook.
‘We’re grateful to Lady Freethinker for bringing these posts to our attention and we have contacted them so we can get the information we need to investigate this content.
‘If people see something on Facebook they think breaks our community standards, we encourage them to report it using the tools on our platform so our teams can investigate and take action.’